Keynote Speakers

Keynote Speakers


Prof. John P.A. Ioannidis is Professor of Medicine, of Epidemiology and Population Health, Stanford, USA

Keynote lecture titlePersonalized health: evidence, prediction, ethics, and reproducibility

He was trained at the University of Athens School of Medicine in Greece, Harvard and Tufts, and held appointments at the U.S. NIH, Johns Hopkins, Tufts, Harvard, University of Ioannina, and Imperial College London. Dr. Ioannidis is one of the most-cited scientists of all times in the scientific literature. His current research at Stanford covers a wide agenda, including meta-research, large-scale evidence-based medicine, population health sciences and predictive medicine and health. He has received numerous awards as well as honorary doctorates from many universities. He has been inducted in the Association of American Physicians (2009), European Academy of Cancer Sciences (2010) American Epidemiological Society (2015), European Academy of Sciences and Arts (2015), National Academy of Medicine (2018), and Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna (2020). Dr. Ioannidis is recognized as the leading clinical research methodologist of his generation for his work in evidence-based medicine and in appraising and improving the credibility of scientific studies and results.

Website: med.stanford.edu/profiles/John_Ioannidis


Prof. Heidi J. Larson Director, The Vaccine Confidence Project, Professor of Anthropology and Risk, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and University of Antwerp.

Keynote lecture titleBuilding Societal Cooperation and Cohesion: The next Big Global Health Challenge

Her research focuses on the analysis of social and political factors that can affect uptake of health interventions with a particular interest in understanding and managing risk and rumors from clinical trials to delivery – and building public trust.  
Prof. Larson previously headed Global Immunization Communication at UNICEF, chaired Gavi’s Advocacy Task Force, and served on the WHO SAGE Working Group on vaccine hesitancy.
She is author of STUCK: How Vaccine Rumors Start – and Why They Don’t Go Away (Oxford University Press, 2020) and has published widely on the drivers and enablers of vaccine confidence. In 2021, she was awarded the Edinburgh Medal, in recognition of the role she has played in recognising the importance of popular and widespread misunderstandings of vaccines.

Website: www.vaccineconfidence.org

Twitter: @ProfHeidiLarson


Prof. Joseph Loscalzo is Chair, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, USA.

Keynote lecture titleNetwork Medicine: Novel Approaches to Human Disease and Therapeutics. Emphasis on Cardiometabolic Disease

Joseph Loscalzo is the Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Soma Weiss, MD, Distinguished Chair in Medicine, Chair of the Department of Medicine, and Physician-in-Chief at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. in Biochemistry. He has published over 1,100 scientific articles, written or edited 53 books, and holds 32 patents. His research focus has been in the areas of vascular and redox biology, systems biology, and network medicine, with continuous funding from the NIH for over 35 years. He is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.


Prof. Anna Vassall is Professor of Health Economics, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Joep Lange Chair, University of Amsterdam.

Keynote lecture titleClosing the Gap in Global Health: Learning from Exemplary Health Systems

Professor Vassall is the Director the Global Health Economics Centre, a group of over 80 health economists based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has published over 150 papers, on HIV prevention for key populations, the integration of HIV/SRH, TB control and the prevention of violence against women and girls. She leads the Exemplars in Primary Health Care (PHC) project examining the influence of health systems in improving PHC efficiency.  She sits on the technical advisory group for health technology assessment (HTA) at WHO. She co-founded the Global Health Costing Consortium; a BMGF funded project to analyse HIV, TB and health service costs globally. She works with Ministries of Health in several countries defining evidence based health benefit packages to improve UHC, as part of Disease Control Priorities and the International Decision Support Initiative. She was awarded the Joep Lange Chair at the University of Amsterdam.